Restore not working

I have a laptop with a 40 gig hard drive divided into two 20 gig partitions. I have the latest build of Acronis 10. I used the bootable cd to create a full backup of my C drive onto a removable hard drive. I then did a "add new drive" making my C drive one physical 40 gig partition. Next step, using the bootabel CD, was a Restore. No good. I get a message saying something like operating system not present. I then did a restore of MBR and track 0. Still will not boot. I am very experienced with computers, but this one has me baffled. I ran the cd restore program again and at "archive selection" I looked at the layout of the C drive and all the restored files are there on my laptop. I need my laptop for my job. HELP!!
Bob

I don't know, but give it a try. As you will know, some XP install cds are tied to the computer they came with.

BTW, there are several Repair options that will come up. The one you want is the one that appears right after the EULA screen. So Ignore any ones before that. This Repair will keep all your applications intact. The other ones may not.

Have you looked at the c:\boot.ini file on the restored laptop. Perhaps your old computer had hidden or diagnostic partitions and the boot partition was then something other than 1. See if the old ini file shows a boot partition of 2. If yes, then try changing it to 1.

Stupid me!!! I just had to plug my usb drive into my main desktop and run Acronis from there.
This is what the boot ini file has:
[boot loader]
timeout=30
default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(2)\WINDOWS
[operating systems]
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(2)\WINDOWS="Microsoft Windows XP Home Edition" /fastdetect /NoExecute=OptIn
So, how do I change it?

Never mind. I formatted the drive, installed my store-bought copy of XP (installed on desktop), used the key on the label on the back of the notebook, called Microsoft and they activated me. Loaded all needed programs and drivers from the Sony site. Only problem is no Mass Storage Controllers, but it's working. Thanks for the help.
Bob